Types of Hosting

Every website is simply a collection of files, images, data, and such that is stored on a computer that is connected to the internet and web hosting is a service that offers you the mechanics of creating a virtual presence on the World Wide Web. Web host companies provide the work as data centers with their servers and disk spaces as all the files connected to your website need to be stored on a server somewhere, just waiting for someone to retrieve them when they decide to check what your site has to offer.

The most important decision you will have make is what type of web hosting plan to use for your web site. So what do you want to get from web hosting? Your own web space, of course.

By that I mean you will want to have a computer on which you are allocated enough storage to keep all your files for and online presences. These files include web pages, images, audios, and videos, to name a few. Initially you may be provided at total space of 200 MB and that’s plenty for a basic website. If you add a lot of sound, graphics, photos, or videos, you’ll need more than that.

You may also want an email account that is exclusively connected to your website, unlike in millions of public e-mail addresses such as Gmail or Yahoo. Most hosting accounts provide you with at least one email address that will be connected to your website. For example, if your website by called ‘smithfamily.com’ then your e-mail could be set up as to read ‘yourname@smithfamily.com’. Such an e-mail address looks more professional and gives you credibility as someone who is not a fly-by-night, especially if you’re truly serious about doing business on the web.

Before I begin to discuss the various types of websites, let’s briefly mention bandwidth. This refers to how much data is being transferred over the Internet in a certain amount of time. Many people overlook this as they become enamored with the low prices of packages. The absolute basic hosting package may make it very hard for your users to view your web page, more so if a single web page contains a lot of images, audios, or videos as they eat too much bandwidth. So when deciding what type of hosting you are needing, be sure to keep in mind what your website will contain and how much bandwidth will be required for your website guests to see what your really intended for them to see.

Understanding the various types of hosting that are available to you is essential to your getting your website online. There are services that will host your entire website while other providers will host your file folders, images, video, blogs, or shopping carts. There is also the popular one-click hosting providers that allow users to upload any type of file from their computer to the company's server, usually free of charge. However, for the purpose of this discussion, we will be limiting our talk to hosting websites.

Let’s walk through the maze of web hosting offers and see the various types of web hosting products available to you. We will be looking at each category briefly. The variety of products include:

• Free web hosting
• Shared web hosting
• Reseller web hosting
• Virtual Dedicated Server
• Dedicated Hosting
• Managed Hosting Services
• Colocation web hosting
• Clustered hosting
• Grid hosting

We’re going to look at these individually to discuss their features as well as their pros and cons. You will discover that web hosting plans are split into a few distinct categories, each with strengths and weaknesses. The first type is the free web host and the others are all to-be-paid-for packages.